Racism questionnaires to be distributed

Newspapers in three Northern Ontario cities including North Bay will have their newspapers monitored as part of an anti-racism program.

Further details of the program are included in the following news release, issued today by North Bay's International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Committee and the Union of Ontario Indians.

Racism questionnaire being distributed in January

Advisory committees in North Bay, Timmins and Sault Ste. Marie have all held their first meetings and will be ready to begin distribution of a racism survey in mid-January.

“We are using a survey developed in Thunder Bay last year,” said North Bay advisory committee chair Susan Church. “It was vetted by three university professors and the literacy organization in Thunder Bay. However, each committee has made slight changes and we are going to have the revised questionnaire field-tested in Sault Ste. Marie before Christmas.”

Questionnaires will be distributed at many organizations, schools and agencies in the city and will be available to the general public in The Nugget and possibly on web sites.

“People interested in being interviewed as a follow-up to the survey will self-identify and will be contacted by the study team,” Church said. Interviews will take place in February and March, with final reports in each city due in the spring.

“We will also be establishing a Northern Ontario anti-racism web site for those active in the field and for people studying this issue,” Church said.

Another component of the research is a three-month newspaper-monitoring project, involving daily and weekly newspapers in and near the three cities. While the study will examine newspapers’ coverage of Aboriginal issues, “it is designed more as an educational program than a ‘gotcha’ exercise,” Church said.

The volunteer advisory committee is comprised of members of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and Nipissing District Human Rights Hall of Fame committee. “We have added a few people to the committee for this project, including two hall of fame members, Mariela Karpecki and Maurice Switzer,” Church said. Funding for the three-city project is from Canadian Heritage, Multiculturalism and Human Rights Program. The project has been named “Debwewin,” the eastern Ojibwe word for “truth.”

Anyone interested in having their workplace, school, class or organization surveyed can contact the facilitator, John Mains, at 495-8887.